278 
THROUGH SOMALILAND AND ABYSSINIA ch. xi 
held up their tobes as a screen to shield him from the public 
eye. 
After the seniors had left the hall, the baskets were taken 
out and refilled with fresh breads, and five hundred officers 
next in rank entered and sat down. The same performance 
was repeated four times — a total of two thousand partaking of 
the dinner. The proceedings, being under the eye of the King, 
were decorous, and showed that whatever the outlying irregular 
troops on the Somali frontier might be like, there was nothing 
boorish or savage about the ways of this feudal court. 
A fine spectacle was the Feast of St. Raguel at Entotto, to 
which we were invited ; this day being the one on which the King 
chose to show us marked favour in the presence of his army 
and of the other Europeans at the capital. The church of St. 
Raguel stands on the top of a heavily fortified hill four miles 
to the north of Addis - Abbaba. At a very early hour we 
marched up to attend the service, passing the church of St. 
Mariam on one of the intervening ridges. Everybody in Addis- 
Abbaba seemed to be either converging towards St. RaguePs or 
already waiting round the church. 
In the course of the service a procession of priests approached 
us, in the full dress of the Coptic ritual. There were crosses, 
sacred pictures, swinging incense, and acolytes with silver- 
fringed tiaras. A golden cross was held before us, which we 
kissed. 
Outside the church, in bright sunlight, stood the people 
and soldiers, all carrying rifles, in tens of thousands, while 
lines and dots of white and red, winding for miles up the 
hillsides from the direction of Addis -Abbaba, indicated the 
late arrivals. 
The church itself was a large octagonal building with cone- 
shaped roof surmounted by a silver globe and cross. The 
spaces between concentric walls, inside the building, were 
covered with sacred pictures, painted by native artists, and 
not so bad considering their origin. Some few, of conspicuously 
better art, were presents from Russia, or painted by Italians. 
At the end of the service followed a ceremony both religious 
and warlike in character, representing the dance of King David 
before the Ark of the Covenant. It was performed on a cleared 
carpeted space outside the church, and seemed in the din of 
human voice, drum, and sistrum as stirring and fanatical as 
anything of the kind to be seen among the followers of 
